I don't get this. Why would you want to have another member of the human race relive such a horrible day in our history? Why would you put somebody from a proud culture in the predicament of shaking the hand of the person that pushed the button to slaughter 100,000 of your fellow countrymen?

With that said, I'm surprised how well he handled it, and how awkward the pilot looked and must have felt to be there.

Jesus Christ, this was excruciating. I think both the Reverend and the co-pilot behaved with dignity, which is a lot more than I can say for the cheeseball host, with his Ed Herlihy "Keep'em comin', boys!" newsreel voice and his horrible, purple prose dialogue. And this was less than 10 goddamn years after we vaporized or irradiated everyone this guy ever met. Who the fark thought this was a good idea?

I'm trying to picture some New Yorkers going on Iraqi television to shake hands with the 9/11 planners. Un-goddamn-thinkable.

fluffytuff:I don't get this. Why would you want to have another member of the human race relive such a horrible day in our history? Why would you put somebody from a proud culture in the predicament of shaking the hand of the person that pushed the button to slaughter 100,000 of your fellow countrymen?

With that said, I'm surprised how well he handled it, and how awkward the pilot looked and must have felt to be there.

That really was a low point. Poor guy barely understood the concept of the show he was on. They misled him to believe it was simply an interview show, and made what had to be the worst event of his life into a spectacle, with him in the spotlight.

Barricaded Gunman:Jesus Christ, this was excruciating. I think both the Reverend and the co-pilot behaved with dignity, which is a lot more than I can say for the cheeseball host, with his Ed Herlihy "Keep'em comin', boys!" newsreel voice and his horrible, purple prose dialogue. And this was less than 10 goddamn years after we vaporized or irradiated everyone this guy ever met. Who the fark thought this was a good idea?

I'm trying to picture some New Yorkers going on Iraqi television to shake hands with the 9/11 planners. Un-goddamn-thinkable.

rob42164:I went to Japan a couple of years ago and a lady asked us if we were Americans...we told her yes.

She then looked at us and said....Hiroshima,Hiroshima..... over and over again. Very creepy. We turned and walked away before she got too upset.

You must have run into a nutcase (available on most street corners) I have been to Japan a couple of times and even to Hiroshima, and have been greeted with nothing more disrespectful than a unconvincing "irasshaimase"(welcome) when I walk into the Lawsons

Every time I start to feel bad about America using nuclear weapons on Japan, I remember the fact that the two bombings were 3 days apart and Japan didn't surrender during that time, nor even for many days after the second, resulting in the Allies launching a massive conventional air attack 5 days after Nagasaki. If Japan had dithered another 5 days, they would have received a-bomb #3.

i can't find the article, but there was a good longform about this incident. The Japanese came to America with a group of disfigured girls, I believe to show the effects and attempt to establish positive relations with the Americans or something. They were booked for this show. The show told the American that they wanted him to come on and talk about how he was on the Enola Gay. Then "surprise", you're going to meet some Japanese! That's why the guy went and got drunk, he couldn't handle the emotion. The show made it look like they did something fantastic for the world, when it turns out they were manipulating all of the players, shocking, huh? ha.

Nem Wan:Every time I start to feel bad about America using nuclear weapons on Japan, I remember the fact that the two bombings were 3 days apart and Japan didn't surrender during that time, nor even for many days after the second, resulting in the Allies launching a massive conventional air attack 5 days after Nagasaki. If Japan had dithered another 5 days, they would have received a-bomb #3.

Not to mention the fact that Tokyo itself was spared only because of cloud cover over Nagasaki.

JohnAnnArbor:rob42164: I went to Japan a couple of years ago and a lady asked us if we were Americans...we told her yes.

She then looked at us and said....Hiroshima,Hiroshima..... over and over again. Very creepy. We turned and walked away before she got too upset.

You should have taught her some new words: Bataan, Wake, ....

Thank you. My grandfather was in the US military during WWII and I grew up hearing stories of my family hiding in the mountains when the Japanese invaded while my GF fought in the war. Some of my family members were degraded and tortured by the Japanese.

Hiroshima was horrendous but it was no worse than what the Japanese would have done had the war continued.

rob42164:I went to Japan a couple of years ago and a lady asked us if we were Americans...we told her yes.

She then looked at us and said....Hiroshima,Hiroshima..... over and over again. Very creepy. We turned and walked away before she got too upset.

My college roommate was Chinese. Although he was not out and out genocidal towards the Japanese he didn't seem to broken up about Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I suspect that if he had been there he would have either blown up at her or started laughing.

Eh.... you can pick it apart in a variety of ways (scope, rationale, intent, effect) and I'd agree, but as far as "shaking hands with a guy who personally killed thousands of my people 10 years ago," I think it kind of works.

bulok:JohnAnnArbor: rob42164: I went to Japan a couple of years ago and a lady asked us if we were Americans...we told her yes.

She then looked at us and said....Hiroshima,Hiroshima..... over and over again. Very creepy. We turned and walked away before she got too upset.

You should have taught her some new words: Bataan, Wake, ....

Thank you. My grandfather was in the US military during WWII and I grew up hearing stories of my family hiding in the mountains when the Japanese invaded while my GF fought in the war. Some of my family members were degraded and tortured by the Japanese.

Hiroshima was horrendous but it was no worse than what the Japanese would have done had the war continued.

They had already done worse. And showed no signs of stopping or changing that behavior until after the 2nd bomb was dropped.

3-10M people murdered along with all the torture that came with it/etc. I'd agree that not only was it not worse than what they would have done, but that it was also not worse than what they had already done. By a long shot...

They were proud of serving their country and helping to end the largest war in world history, which had dragged on for years and killed millions of people. You have to bear in mind that this was only ten years later. If you're young, that may seem like a long time, but when you get to 40 or so it won't. Capt. Lewis would have been about 38 when this show was filmed. You can see him choking up as he describes the destruction. Does that seem like he was proud to have helped kill all those people?

You also need to remember that America went to war because of the *surprise* bombing of Pearl Harbor -- still to this day, the greatest military assault on U.S. territory ever. There was a lot of emotion around all of this, but not all of it was pity and horror over what happened to those cities. There was blood and crime on both sides, and people of the time grasped that. *Everyone* at this time knew someone who was directly affected by the War, or was involved themselves. It wasn't a bunch of stories in history books yet, but real and recent events with very personal connections. There were very few Americans of the mid-1950s who honestly believed that the bombings were wrong and should not have happened. To get some idea of the sentiment of the time, consider that Rhode Island, where the SeaBees were based, still celebrates V-J Day (though they don't call it that anymore).

Also too, this was broadcast during the fever pitch of the early Cold War, and America wanted to project not only that we had the capability to use these weapons, but the continuing will to do so. And we had good reason: After the War, the Soviet Union gobbled up numerous satellite states, forming the Eastern Bloc. Many Americans of the time firmly believed that it was only our nuclear capability -- and again, the will to use it -- that protected us from the Red Menace. Indeed, many modern historicans (my late mother among them) believe that the bombings were intended as much to demonstrate to Soviet Russia what we could and might do to them. So as much as everyone felt awful about what happened to thousands of Japanese civilians, few people felt bad about the weapon itself as such.

It may be pointless to try to establish which World War Two Axis aggressor, Germany or Japan, was the more brutal to the peoples it victimised. The Germans killed six million Jews and 20 million Russians (i.e. Soviet citizens); the Japanese slaughtered as many as 30 million Filipinos, Malays, Vietnamese, Cambodians, Indonesians and Burmese, at least 23 million of them ethnic Chinese. Both nations looted the countries they conquered on a monumental scale, though Japan plundered more, over a longer period, than the Nazis. Both conquerors enslaved millions and exploited them as forced labourers-and, in the case of the Japanese, as (forced) prostitutes for front-line troops. If you were a Nazi prisoner of war from Britain, America, Australia, New Zealand or Canada (but not the Soviet Union) you faced a 4% chance of not surviving the war; (by comparison) the death rate for Allied POWs held by the Japanese was nearly 30%."

I can't believe how the japanese man managed to compose himself meeting the man who rained so much death upon his city. I would have to believe that the japanese culture is well acquainted with the idea of "duty" and he probably thought that this man was just doing what he was ordered to do. Still, would have been very weird, and it seemed that the pilot was a big shaken up meeting someone from that doomed city. i hope we never have to do such a awful thing again.

fluffytuff:I don't get this. Why would you want to have another member of the human race relive such a horrible day in our history? Why would you put somebody from a proud culture in the predicament of shaking the hand of the person that pushed the button to slaughter 100,000 of your fellow countrymen?

With that said, I'm surprised how well he handled it, and how awkward the pilot looked and must have felt to be there.

One of the GREATEST days in history. They started the shiat, we ended it. Now we need to play cowboys and Muslims.